Armor is not that important currently

[Hearteater]

Armor and Armor Pen values need to change, that's pretty certain in my mind.  Some minor changes to the formula, such as the 80% mitigation cap probably also needs to happen.  80% to 95% cap is 33% longer to kill.  But with present Armor values that is rarely an issue unless the target has "MAX" armor and the attacker doesn't happen to have "MAX" armor pen.  Probably key will be the Fighter's Armor Pen value because right now it is probably too high relative to other ships with armor pen.  I have also been wonder if maybe hull multipliers shouldn't be applied after armor.

[keith.lamothe]

80% to 95% cap is 33% longer to kill.

Actually it's 300% longer to kill, right?  Instead of doing 20 damage a shot, you do 5.  If it had 1000 hp that's suddenly 200 shots instead of 50.

Anyway, yea, I think adding a zero (or two, but that could be a bit much) after most of the normal armor values (and armor pen values, presumably) would be an interesting step, probably in the right direction.  Not planning anything like that for the next release, though.

[TechSY730]

I like the armor mechanic as is, it's just not useful atm.  Either you're sandpapering something to death or it's a useless number.  I'm not sure I'm happy at the 80% value, but I have no idea what the 95% looked like.

Has the game really devolved to such a point where durability means nothing unless it is enough to barely be scratched by anything?
If so, that needs to be addressed as well.


Also, 95% was tried earlier. That proved to be very annoying, though that could of been due to the generally low armor piercing rating ships with armor piercing have, instead of being just too much damage reduction.

I mentioned that 90% damage reduction as a max due to armor seemed like a decent compromise.

[TechSY730]

Anyway, yea, I think adding a zero (or two, but that could be a bit much) after most of the normal armor values (and armor pen values, presumably) would be an interesting step, probably in the right direction.  Not planning anything like that for the next release, though.

Yea, I made this post with the full understanding that this is a pervasive balance issue. The changes needed to fix this would not be appropriate for a "maintence" development cycle. It would be better during a "rapid, active" development cycle, where changes in balance could get feedback and be tweaked as such in a quick time-frame.

I just thought it would be better to mention this now, so we have an idea on what to do when the time comes.

[TechSY730]

Wait, is the damage formula,
attack_modifiers * max(min_damage_ratio_for_armor * base_damage, base_damage - effective_armor)
or
max(min_damage_ratio_for_armor * attack_modifiers * base_damage, (attack_modifiers * base_damage) -  effective_armor))

where
attack_modifiers = hull_multiplier * attack_multipliers
hull_multiplier is the multiplier from hull bonuses/penalities
attack_multipliers is the bonuses from things like munitions boosters
effective armor = armor_multipliers * max(0, target_armor - armor_penetration - target_armor_rotted)
armor_multipliers is the multiplier from things like armor boosters or armor inhibitors (which set it to 0)
currently, min_damage_ratio_for_armor = .2
and base_damage is the base weapon damage except for ships with special damage calculations (polarizers, vultures, etc)
and the other variables should be self explanatory, hopefully.


Or MUCH less formally, are the hull and attack multipliers applied before or after armor considerations?

[Cyborg]

What's the objection to making it on a logarithmic scale? This game doesn't have an experience point system, so a linear armor scheme isn't going to scale well. You will have to rebalance all the time.

[TechSY730]

What's the objection to making it on a logarithmic scale? This game doesn't have an experience point system, so a linear armor scheme isn't going to scale well. You will have to rebalance all the time.

So, you are proposing that damage reduction be based on a log of the ratio between damage and effective armor? Or a log of the difference between damage and effective armor? (In both cases, log base and scaling factors TBD)

EDIT: Oh, to answer your actual question, my objection would be that it would make it harder to figure out how much difference your armor rating would make vs. a specific ship types, and how good an armor rating is overall.

[Cyborg]

What's the objection to making it on a logarithmic scale? This game doesn't have an experience point system, so a linear armor scheme isn't going to scale well. You will have to rebalance all the time.

So, you are proposing that damage reduction be based on a log of the ratio between damage and effective armor? Or a log of the difference between damage and effective armor? (In both cases, log base and scaling factors TBD)

EDIT: Oh, to answer your actual question, my objection would be that it would make it harder to figure out how much difference your armor rating would make vs. a specific ship types, and how good an armor rating is overall.

It shouldn't. By using a scale, you get a set reduction that can be calculated and put right on the tooltip. It would actually be more specific than saying 8000, which is confusing and meaningless to most people. And to answer your question, it would be the ratio between damage and effective armor. The multiplier for a given hull would occur after the logarithm.

[Cyborg]

As an aside, I wonder if a lot of these damage calculations would be better served as lookup tables rather than mathematics performed on the processor.

[TechSY730]

It shouldn't. By using a scale, you get a set reduction that can be calculated and put right on the tooltip. It would actually be more specific than saying 8000, which is confusing and meaningless to most people. And to answer your question, it would be the ratio between damage and effective armor. The multiplier for a given hull would occur after the logarithm.
...
As an aside, I wonder if a lot of these damage calculations would be better served as lookup tables rather than mathematics performed on the processor.

You mean making the scaling discontinuous? I don't know. I sort of like systems where "every point counts" (short of rounding error).

[Cyborg]

You mean making the scaling discontinuous? I don't know. I sort of like systems where "every point counts" (short of rounding error).

No. Think of it as caching the result; why would you compute the damage done by equivalent scenarios multiple times? It doesn't make it any less accurate.

[Hearteater]

80% to 95% cap is 33% longer to kill.

Actually it's 300% longer to kill, right?  Instead of doing 20 damage a shot, you do 5.  If it had 1000 hp that's suddenly 200 shots instead of 50.

Anyway, yea, I think adding a zero (or two, but that could be a bit much) after most of the normal armor values (and armor pen values, presumably) would be an interesting step, probably in the right direction.  Not planning anything like that for the next release, though.

Wow I was tired last night.  Yeah, 90% is twice as much to kill, and 95% is four times as much (aka, +300%).

Or MUCH less formally, are the hull and attack multipliers applied before or after armor considerations?

Correct.  Which means armor is marginalized when the attacking ship has an advantage against the hull type.  It probably should go the other way, which would sort of create two versions of each hull type: high armor and low armor.  A ship with zero Armor Pen will have trouble even against a hull type it has a high multiplier on.  Which leaves room anti-armor ships.

I'm honestly not sold on changing the 80%, especially for fleet ships, and I think I still like the variable armor mitigation caps by ship class, although the exact numbers might not match that post.  I say this because I think it is beneficial if high armor super targets (golems) are killed noticeably quicker with anti-armor units.  If hull multipliers happen after armor, then I think this type of thing may be even more important.  Another option would be just to assign mitigation caps by ship class rather than compare attacking class vs defending class, with golems getting the most favorable mitigation cap, and fleet ships the current 80%.

[keith.lamothe]

On lookup tables: if we went with a logarithmic scale, that's absolutely what we'd have to do.  The game computes "how much damage would X do to Y" way too often to be doing any kind of exponential math in the computation as often as armor is involved.

We actually use lookup tables for converting "ship current->destination slope" to "ship rotation angle" to avoid calling sin() and cos() a ridiculous number of times simply for movement, and that's a fairly extensive set of numbers.  Though the magnitude of a new lookup table would need to be sanity checked due to our relatively tight heap-size ceiling.

Cyborg, to clarify: are you talking about (in a case with no hull multipliers for simplicity) :

1)

damage = attacker_raw_damage - f(defender_armor_rating - attacker_armor_pen)

where f(n) = log(n)     (and presumably other multipliers or whatever, as straight up log(n) would produce pretty low values)

instead of the current f(n) = n


or 2)

damage = attacker_raw_damage * (1 -  f(defender_armor_rating - attacker_armor_pen) )

where f(n) = log(n)   (and whatever other stuff and/or divisors to keep 10 armor from nulling out all damage, negative damage, etc)



Anyway, I don't know right now that the subtractive model is fundamentally unbalanceable, or that a logarithmic model would be better on that count, but it's possible.

[TechSY730]

Or MUCH less formally, are the hull and attack multipliers applied before or after armor considerations?

Correct.  Which means armor is marginalized when the attacking ship has an advantage against the hull type.  It probably should go the other way, which would sort of create two versions of each hull type: high armor and low armor.  A ship with zero Armor Pen will have trouble even against a hull type it has a high multiplier on.  Which leaves room anti-armor ships.

I assume you mean that the hull bonuses and stuff get applied BEFORE the subtraction of effective armour from base damage. Its the difference between multiplier * (attack - armour) = multiplier * attack - multiplier * armor (multiplier after armour calculation), and (multiplier * attack)  - armour (multiplier before armour calculation).

Applying the multiplier after armour considerations means armour is more effective at holding back damage in the face of hull bonuses. Applying the multiplier before amour considerations means armour is less effective at holding back damage in the face of hull bonuses.

[keith.lamothe]

Hull bonuses are applied before armor.